A mission critical online system is constructed not only to be provided with reliability and availability, which are important to stable operation of the system, but also to have a response time reduced as much as possible. The response time is from transmission of a processing request by a user device to reception of a processing result. Such a system is an online system, for example, for stock trading or foreign exchange margin trading. Also, in order to cope with the situation in which trading is often concentrated in a particular period, such a system is constructed to have sufficient throughput which allows a great number of processing requests to be processed simultaneously in parallel.
Regarding the processing performed by a server, the following techniques are known. For example, a server performs processing based on received processing requests, and classifies messages, which are processing results, into queues that are prepared for each destination. When the number of messages stored in a queue becomes greater than or equal to a predetermined number, the server integrates the plurality of messages stored in the queue and transmits the messages to a transmission source apparatus of processing requests. Alternatively, when a predetermined time elapses since a message is stored in a queue, the server integrates messages stored in the queue and transmits the integrated messages to a transmission source apparatus of processing requests. In this manner, messages having the same destination are collectively transmitted, and thus the amount of traffic in the network may be reduced and the processing load of the server may be decreased.
Although such a technique can reduce the number of times of transmission, the response time may be increased. For example, when the number of processing requests received by a server is relatively small, processing results are not likely to be accumulated in a queue. Therefore, although the processing load of the server is relatively low, the processing results stored in a queue may not be transmitted until a predetermined time elapses. Also when the destinations of processing results are evenly distributed, processing results are not likely to be accumulated in a queue. That is, the above-described technique may reduce response performance by integrating the processing results.
Related arts are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication Nos. 2006-31238 and 5-160855.